Between the Lines

In his first month at Hartley and Dunne, a firm of structural engineers in Manchester, Alejandro Ruiz was told by almost everyone he met that his work was quite interesting. He was delighted. He had come from Monterrey, where he had spent six years designing bridges and parking garages for a company whose director communicated mainly by shouting, and in Monterrey, if someone said your work was interesting, they meant it. He reported his success to his wife, Daniela, on the phone every evening. "They love the drainage proposal," he told her. "Everybody says it's quite interesting."

The project was a footbridge over a canal in Salford, small but visible, the kind of job that gets a firm's name in the local paper. Alejandro had been given the drainage and the deck, and he had come up with something he was proud of: an unusual system of narrow channels beneath the walkway that would carry rainwater away without the ugly downpipes everyone else used. At the design meeting his manager, a softly spoken man called Martin Ashworth, looked at the drawings for a long time and said, "Well. That's certainly a brave approach." Alejandro thanked him warmly.

Priya Shah, who sat opposite him and had been at the firm for nine years, waited until Martin had gone back to his office. Then she wheeled her chair across. "Can I give you a bit of advice?" she said. "When Martin says something is brave, he doesn't mean brave. He means he thinks you might be making a terrible mistake." Alejandro stared at her. "And quite interesting?" "Depends on the tone," said Priya. "Usually it means not very interesting at all. If he'd actually liked it, he'd have said it was quite good. Which, by the way, is also a compliment, but not as big a one as you'd think."

Alejandro spent that evening making a list, as he did with any technical problem. "I hear what you say" meant "I disagree and do not wish to discuss it further". "I'll bear it in mind" meant "I have already forgotten it". "Not bad" could mean "excellent", depending on who said it. "With respect" meant, on the whole, the opposite, and "with the greatest respect" meant that someone was about to be very rude indeed, as politely as possible. "It's like watching a film with the subtitles switched off," he told Daniela. "In Mexico we are polite too, but we are polite with more words, not fewer. Here they are polite by not saying the thing at all."

He would like to say that the list solved everything. It did not. Knowing the code in theory was one thing; hearing it in real time, in a meeting room, with a mouth full of biscuit, was quite another. When Martin remarked, two weeks later, that it "might be worth having another look at the drainage before the review", Alejandro said he would, made a note and then, because the deadline was close and he was quietly sure of his calculations, changed almost nothing. The understatement had gone straight past him, like a ball he had not seen thrown.

The project review took place in a glass meeting room on the fourth floor, in front of the client, two engineers from the city council and a woman from an independent consultancy who said very little and wrote a great deal. Alejandro presented his drainage system with enthusiasm. When he had finished, the senior council engineer smiled pleasantly and said, "Thank you. That was very thorough. I just wonder, with the greatest respect, whether you've considered what happens to those channels in January, when they're full of leaves and frozen solid." There was a short silence. Alejandro realized, a moment too late, that he had not.

The design did not pass the review. Nobody shouted, and nobody used the word failure. The minutes of the meeting recorded that "some aspects of the drainage proposal would benefit from further development", which Priya, reading them over his shoulder, translated without mercy as "back to the drawing board". Alejandro spent a miserable weekend replaying the meeting in his head, and it was only on Sunday night that he noticed, with a kind of reluctant admiration, how many times he had been warned. Martin had told him twice. The council engineer had told him once. Everyone had been perfectly clear; they had simply been clear in a language he had not yet learned to hear.

On Monday he went to see Martin and apologized. Martin looked genuinely uncomfortable, as English managers often do when faced with direct emotion, and said it was "not the end of the world" and that "these things happen", which Alejandro, to his own surprise, correctly understood to mean that it was a fairly serious setback but that his job was safe. Together they redesigned the channels with removable covers and a simple heating cable, and the revised scheme passed the next review without difficulty. The bridge opened the following spring. Alejandro's drainage, slightly less brave than before, worked perfectly.

A year later a new graduate from Spain joined the team, eager, talented and convinced that everyone loved his work. At his first design meeting he presented a plan for a parking garage staircase that would have required, among other things, the removal of a load-bearing wall. Martin looked at the drawings for a long time. Then Alejandro, who was sitting beside him, leaned forward and said kindly, "That's a really interesting idea, Pablo. Very brave." Across the table, Priya caught his eye and very nearly laughed.